Blue Wing Teal background

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
1

I took this shot a couple of years ago, and I have never gotten the background just right. Any thoughts on that, or the image in general? D7000/ Nikkor 55-300mm.

Blue%20wing%20teal1
Blue%20wing%20teal11060×729 768 KB

You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
2

A very nice look at the Teal. You might see how it looks with the background darkened.

3

I looked at the larger version of the image and something is clearly off. I see big “blocks” of pixels in the background. I don’t know what the original looked like, how big a crop this is, or what processing you may have done to the background, bu your question on the background is important for this image because something is really odd. Any chance you could post the original, uncrossed version of the image (even an unprocessed jpeg from the RAW file).

4

I agree with Keith, Larry. the background does look our of whack. The teal looks fine, so I think it must be previous attempts to tame the background that we’re seeing. I definitely think this is one of those “start over” situations.

5

I don’t have the raw image anymore, this is the jpeg before I started messing around with it.

Blue%20wing%20teal1-2
Blue%20wing%20teal1-22048×1356 1.22 MB

6

Boy, Larry, you picked a tough one. I downloaded this with some ideas of what might work in LightRoom but when I tried those ideas it just kept getting uglier. I’ll be interested in seeing if Keith has any ideas on how to tame it since he’s a guru of LightRoom.

7

I agree it is not pretty. I’m still searching for the raw but so far no go.

8

079497a024a60811f7431385894ccf4b309b254f-copy
079497a024a60811f7431385894ccf4b309b254f-copy1500×993 666 KB

This is probably a bit extreme, but I worked the background in Photoshop with several techniques to soften the background and apply a pretty heavy vignette. Maybe it gives an idea of where this could go. LightRoom is great, but doesn’t have the power to pull off this kind of editing.

Hope this is of some help.

9

Thank you Keith! That is far better than anything I have come up with. I do need to start learning Photoshop. YouTube, lead the way. lol

I appreciate your help.

10

Larry. Most places you can find good introductory Photoshop classes at your local community college under the continuing education heading. I think they give you a much better starting point than on line tutorials. Tutorials are great for solving a pargicular problem or learning a technique but not so good for the basics. There are also a ton of books out there. You could post a query in the discussion forum for recommendations.

11

Thanks for the advice Dennis.